I came across this practice in a video a while ago… I wish I remembered the name of the person who shared it, but unfortunately the author is lost to me now, what stayed with me was just how incredibly simple the idea was. The premise is just keeping one notebook where you put down whatever crosses your mind.
The only actual requirement is not to overthink it, I never sit down, stare at a page, and consciously ask myself, “What should I write in my notebook today?”, doing that defeats the purpose.
It’s actually just about letting things land as they happen, for example: a memory that surfaces out of nowhere, a physical sensation, a sudden urge, something you saw that looked interesting, or a fragment of a conversation you overheard.
I try to carry this notebook with me everywhere, though that isn’t always possible… random things just happen to feel interesting at the most random times, so when I don’t have the notebook on me, I just capture the thought wherever I can in that exact moment—on my phone, a loose scrap of paper, or even a napkin… when something catches your attention, you just write it down before it slips away.
the view from the outside
The most interesting part of keeping this notebook happens months later, when you open it and read it from the outside… it gives you a general view of your own mind, letting you observe phases you didn’t even know you were going through.
For example, there was a period when I became really interested in everything related to the beach and the ocean… I didn’t plan it, but that aesthetic just kept showing up on the pages—in the colors of the pens I used, in the quick drawings.
When you look at a single note from a random Tuesday, it might not mean much, but when you look at the notebook as a whole, your perspective changes. The first thing that hits you is a quiet realization: you actually had a lot of ideas, maybe you just didn’t recognize them as ideas at the time.
Reading these old pages feels like looking at the mind of a stranger… it proves that the lingering feeling of “not being creative” is usually false.
what kind of materials do you need?
By the way there are no rules for this kind of notebook.. you can use whatever materials catch your eye. Again, the only requirement is not to think too much. If something interests you, you just put it there.
Personally, I never use much paint in mine… I get distracted easily, and by the time I actually grab the paint and get it ready, I’ve already lost the idea.
In fact, since I can be a bit forgetful, the notebook helps me synthesize things, it brings back what I like and the exact sensation I was feeling the moment I wrote it down, even though I don’t always remember how or when I wrote something… just clarifying that this can happen, and it’s completely normal.
If we’re speaking practically about materials and other stuff, to make it more fun and “yours”, you can personalize it however you want, but not to make it look ‘aesthetic’ though…
do it to make it feel less precious, put a random sticker on the cover, let the corners get bent at the bottom of your bag, use three different colors of pen on the same page, we have infinite possibilities…
why just one notebook?
You may ask yourself “why just one?”
I personally think that the whole point is to have that overarching view of your own mind, it’s simply more practical, and it kinda forces you to think less.
It is not a strict rule, of course. You do what feels right for you, but I believe that keeping multiple notebooks makes you pause and consider which one is the “correct” place for whatever you just thought of or found. By the time you decide where a reference belongs, the urge to capture it might be gone.
start before you’re ready!
The hardest part is always the first page… so let’s ruin it right now.
Open the notes app on your phone, scroll to the bottom and find the last random, disconnected thing you typed there weeks ago… grab a pen and copy it onto the first page of your notebook.
You don’t have to add any context, just move it from the screen to the paper… There, the notebook is no longer empty.
If the thought of ruining a nice, expensive journal still paralyzes you, the best workaround for me is to remove the pressure completely by not buying one, but making my own.
It’s a lot easier to be messy and honest on paper that you folded and stapled yourself… if you want to try that, here is a practical way to bind a simple sketchbook using whatever paper you already have lying around:
